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I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal. Then even if he or she is working a soul-draining job for

I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal. Then even if he or she is working a soul-draining job for, say, a social media company, they will be content knowing it is a necessary step towards their goal.

losteric 9y ago
What do you mean by "goals"? I've met too many people hopelessly throwing themselves against a wall trying to "achieve their dreams"... they see themselves as a Hollywood-esque main character, either aiming unrealistically high or shooting for mundane gimmes. Without a broader vision, those that pick reasonably scoped goals may still end up depressed by their small wins that add up to nothing. Modern mss media and image culture certainly hasn't helped manage realistic expectations or self-perception. I think it's more important to have a strong life stance - a broader collective vision that adds context to the individual - and a stoic understanding of limitations. That metaheuristic provides deeper meaning while facilitating rational evaluation of our achievements/goals. Drawing an analogy to software projects, the life stance defines a person's mission and tenets while goals act as milestones or stories. Executing without the broader vision simply doesn't work for humans... our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away.
- crush-n-spread 9y ago
  Yes, I concur that resistance to burnout depends on having a broader context to your life and humanity as a whole. If you understand your own life within the perspective of the billions of humans that have lived and died before you, and that will live after you, it adds a very resilient drive and resistance to small setbacks. Personally, I was able to achieve this using the recursive why, or chained why, which is a thinking pattern I'll describe here: 1. Come up with a random statement about anything at all. 2. Ask "Why?" about that statement. 3. When you come up with a reasonable answer, ask "Why?" to your stated answer. 4. Repeat step three until you arrive at the meaning of life This really works. I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid because I had no friends. Now it's like I live on another planet compared to people who have not done this. Stoic, content, and driven is the result
  - eduren 9y ago
    While I'm sure that methodology can produce personal drive in some people, others can follow the same process and feel like it'll never mean something. Also, if possible, could you point me in the direction of this "meaning of life" you found. It would really help me out.
    - crush-n-spread 9y ago
      Hi, sure I'll point you in the direction of the meaning of life. It's really the question of why are we here? What are humans and what is our consciousness and emotions? Humans are the most fit creatures for life on planet earth pre-civilization. We were created by an evolutionary algorithm where the fitness function was our ability to reproduce and live the most effective, longest lives. Our emotions and feelings are the "emergent behaviour" of our complex system of mate selection, reproduction and raising our young that runs on a chemical system created by that billion year evolutionary algorithm. So our society is a great big thing that basically determines the lives of 8 billion of these creatures. And the people who are driving the ship don't understand themselves or their place in the universe. They might as well be outside of society altogether, fighting over mates in the forest. But no, here we are, blessed with our language, technology, medical science and all the other blessing bestowed upon us by our prescient forefathers, killing ourselves. Marching towards our own death. Taking human development and the ecology of our planet for granted. The smart among us watch a slow motion apocalypse. So my life goal is to fucking stop this shit whatever it takes so that I can rest easy knowing I didn't get to see the light and then ignore the answers it showed me
  - webmaven 9y ago
    > I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid Why? > because I had no friends. Why?
    - crush-n-spread 9y ago
      Wow, that really was a clever post you made. I think you're smarter than me, and I feel bad about myself.
- projektir 9y ago
  Most high-level goals that I've seen people have amount to what I call "winning the gauntlet". Making a lot of money, founding a big company, achieving fame, finding a high-profile SO, etc. Statistically, those goals will not be achieved by a given person, and not only that, but they effectively amount to "have it better than someone else", i.e., they're zero-sum. Goals like these seem reasonable to people when they surround themselves with "haves", so they are not exposed to the serious problem of the "have-nots" that have to exist for the "haves" to exist. One can be reasonably happy in this state as long as they dodge the cognitive dissonance, or if they just think this is a good model. This works neither for people who care about the world nor those who are "have-nots". Which is most people. So most people end up unhappy while reading self-books (if they even have enough agency for that) from the "haves" and trying to figure out what's going on. But nothing is going on, the situation is zero-sum, so there will always be someone in a bad state in the current system. The only thing that changes is who. The gauntlet cannot be completely ignored because it is necessary for basic agency. But in some cases, the agency is already there, and the person can begin defining their own vision, but they still continue chasing the zero-sum goals due to pressure. Even if you try to develop your own vision things can get strange. > our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away. Well, there are 6+ billion people in the world, and, on average, they have a similar budget. Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it? It would be very strange if the world was filled with these super important goals for each person that were conveniently person-lifetime sized, but it often feels to me like that's the perception. This often ends up back at the zero-sum issue, in the sense of "lots of people can do this, but I need to be the one to do it". It's thinly veiled status-seeking all over again, which is why it fits so well since in a competitive environment, the goal IS person-lifetime sized. A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious. But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing? On a certain level, I think most people seek vision that fulfills subconscious nags they may have, and that's the primary reason they seek it. Things in the region of "am I doing something with my life" or "am I a good person". There isn't an actual vision higher level than that, so once those nags are satisfied, the person will stop asking. But this is just chasing the gauntlet in another way.
taway_1212 9y ago
Most people are not driven really, so this advice won't work for them.
- projektir 9y ago
  The lack of drive is itself the issue, though.
  - taway_1212 9y ago
    Why? Why should everyone by driven/obsessed? Most people are fine doing the minimum that is required to maintain their desired lifestyle level.
    - projektir 9y ago
      Well, remember the start of this conversation: crush-n-spread: > I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal. I believe having a strong over-arching goal is very helpful for a person (working or otherwise). Helpful in the sense that it can offset certain problems or give the person better tools for working around/through them (i.e., depression, burnout, purposelessness, general decision making). I don't think this is the same thing as ambition or obsession, although many people do turn that into their drive and I think that's fairly dangerous (the thing one is obsessed about may not work out). I wouldn't really agree that most people are "fine" in some general sense, nor do most people typically subsist without any kind of life goal (religion is popular).
      - taway_1212 9y ago
        I would say that 'purpose' would fit better into your argument than 'goal'. Taking care of children or elderly parent gives you a purpose but is not a goal. And yes, I agree that having a purpose makes the tough parts of life more bearable.
        projektir 9y ago
tutufan 9y ago
Maybe. I did this for many years, and then by circumstance my overarching goal turned to dust. That's a lot to take. Make sure you're on a path that has some enjoyment in the now. Don't just suffer for some future pleasure.
taco_emoji 9y ago
> strongly held, over-arching life goal Like what? I believe that I'm an incidentally self-aware thermodynamic curiosity; setting any sort of lifelong goal feels like an attempt to fool myself into feeling important.
- ambicapter 9y ago
  What's wrong with feeling important?
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Ah, but feelings of importance are merely incidental mental representations and emotional responses that are somewhat hard coded into our bio machinery, so I'm pretty sure the universe won't mind if you indulge every now and then. Having this self awareness adds a nice element of comic absurdity to the indulgence as well ;)
- Bakary 9y ago
  This line of reasoning feels like it's missing an important piece. If you consider yourself to be unimportant, then why is vanity a bad thing? It won't matter either way, except that you may feel better and be more active.

losteric 9y ago

What do you mean by "goals"? I've met too many people hopelessly throwing themselves against a wall trying to "achieve their dreams"... they see themselves as a Hollywood-esque main character, either aiming unrealistically high or shooting for mundane gimmes. Without a broader vision, those that pick reasonably scoped goals may still end up depressed by their small wins that add up to nothing. Modern mss media and image culture certainly hasn't helped manage realistic expectations or self-perception. I think it's more important to have a strong life stance - a broader collective vision that adds context to the individual - and a stoic understanding of limitations. That metaheuristic provides deeper meaning while facilitating rational evaluation of our achievements/goals. Drawing an analogy to software projects, the life stance defines a person's mission and tenets while goals act as milestones or stories. Executing without the broader vision simply doesn't work for humans... our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away.

crush-n-spread 9y ago
Yes, I concur that resistance to burnout depends on having a broader context to your life and humanity as a whole. If you understand your own life within the perspective of the billions of humans that have lived and died before you, and that will live after you, it adds a very resilient drive and resistance to small setbacks. Personally, I was able to achieve this using the recursive why, or chained why, which is a thinking pattern I'll describe here: 1. Come up with a random statement about anything at all. 2. Ask "Why?" about that statement. 3. When you come up with a reasonable answer, ask "Why?" to your stated answer. 4. Repeat step three until you arrive at the meaning of life This really works. I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid because I had no friends. Now it's like I live on another planet compared to people who have not done this. Stoic, content, and driven is the result
- eduren 9y ago
  While I'm sure that methodology can produce personal drive in some people, others can follow the same process and feel like it'll never mean something. Also, if possible, could you point me in the direction of this "meaning of life" you found. It would really help me out.
  - crush-n-spread 9y ago
    Hi, sure I'll point you in the direction of the meaning of life. It's really the question of why are we here? What are humans and what is our consciousness and emotions? Humans are the most fit creatures for life on planet earth pre-civilization. We were created by an evolutionary algorithm where the fitness function was our ability to reproduce and live the most effective, longest lives. Our emotions and feelings are the "emergent behaviour" of our complex system of mate selection, reproduction and raising our young that runs on a chemical system created by that billion year evolutionary algorithm. So our society is a great big thing that basically determines the lives of 8 billion of these creatures. And the people who are driving the ship don't understand themselves or their place in the universe. They might as well be outside of society altogether, fighting over mates in the forest. But no, here we are, blessed with our language, technology, medical science and all the other blessing bestowed upon us by our prescient forefathers, killing ourselves. Marching towards our own death. Taking human development and the ecology of our planet for granted. The smart among us watch a slow motion apocalypse. So my life goal is to fucking stop this shit whatever it takes so that I can rest easy knowing I didn't get to see the light and then ignore the answers it showed me
- webmaven 9y ago
  > I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid Why? > because I had no friends. Why?
  - crush-n-spread 9y ago
    Wow, that really was a clever post you made. I think you're smarter than me, and I feel bad about myself.
projektir 9y ago
Most high-level goals that I've seen people have amount to what I call "winning the gauntlet". Making a lot of money, founding a big company, achieving fame, finding a high-profile SO, etc. Statistically, those goals will not be achieved by a given person, and not only that, but they effectively amount to "have it better than someone else", i.e., they're zero-sum. Goals like these seem reasonable to people when they surround themselves with "haves", so they are not exposed to the serious problem of the "have-nots" that have to exist for the "haves" to exist. One can be reasonably happy in this state as long as they dodge the cognitive dissonance, or if they just think this is a good model. This works neither for people who care about the world nor those who are "have-nots". Which is most people. So most people end up unhappy while reading self-books (if they even have enough agency for that) from the "haves" and trying to figure out what's going on. But nothing is going on, the situation is zero-sum, so there will always be someone in a bad state in the current system. The only thing that changes is who. The gauntlet cannot be completely ignored because it is necessary for basic agency. But in some cases, the agency is already there, and the person can begin defining their own vision, but they still continue chasing the zero-sum goals due to pressure. Even if you try to develop your own vision things can get strange. > our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away. Well, there are 6+ billion people in the world, and, on average, they have a similar budget. Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it? It would be very strange if the world was filled with these super important goals for each person that were conveniently person-lifetime sized, but it often feels to me like that's the perception. This often ends up back at the zero-sum issue, in the sense of "lots of people can do this, but I need to be the one to do it". It's thinly veiled status-seeking all over again, which is why it fits so well since in a competitive environment, the goal IS person-lifetime sized. A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious. But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing? On a certain level, I think most people seek vision that fulfills subconscious nags they may have, and that's the primary reason they seek it. Things in the region of "am I doing something with my life" or "am I a good person". There isn't an actual vision higher level than that, so once those nags are satisfied, the person will stop asking. But this is just chasing the gauntlet in another way.

taway_1212 9y ago

Most people are not driven really, so this advice won't work for them.

projektir 9y ago
The lack of drive is itself the issue, though.
- taway_1212 9y ago
  Why? Why should everyone by driven/obsessed? Most people are fine doing the minimum that is required to maintain their desired lifestyle level.
  - projektir 9y ago
    Well, remember the start of this conversation: crush-n-spread: > I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal. I believe having a strong over-arching goal is very helpful for a person (working or otherwise). Helpful in the sense that it can offset certain problems or give the person better tools for working around/through them (i.e., depression, burnout, purposelessness, general decision making). I don't think this is the same thing as ambition or obsession, although many people do turn that into their drive and I think that's fairly dangerous (the thing one is obsessed about may not work out). I wouldn't really agree that most people are "fine" in some general sense, nor do most people typically subsist without any kind of life goal (religion is popular).
    - taway_1212 9y ago
      I would say that 'purpose' would fit better into your argument than 'goal'. Taking care of children or elderly parent gives you a purpose but is not a goal. And yes, I agree that having a purpose makes the tough parts of life more bearable.
      - projektir 9y ago

tutufan 9y ago

Maybe. I did this for many years, and then by circumstance my overarching goal turned to dust. That's a lot to take. Make sure you're on a path that has some enjoyment in the now. Don't just suffer for some future pleasure.

taco_emoji 9y ago

> strongly held, over-arching life goal Like what? I believe that I'm an incidentally self-aware thermodynamic curiosity; setting any sort of lifelong goal feels like an attempt to fool myself into feeling important.

ambicapter 9y ago
What's wrong with feeling important?
dwaltrip 9y ago
Ah, but feelings of importance are merely incidental mental representations and emotional responses that are somewhat hard coded into our bio machinery, so I'm pretty sure the universe won't mind if you indulge every now and then. Having this self awareness adds a nice element of comic absurdity to the indulgence as well ;)
Bakary 9y ago
This line of reasoning feels like it's missing an important piece. If you consider yourself to be unimportant, then why is vanity a bad thing? It won't matter either way, except that you may feel better and be more active.